Partners: WWTS (World Women Talent System) e LarkGallery

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WOMEN'S GENERATION: Contemporary Female Cosmogonies

Curated by Dores Sacquegna

The contemporary art exhibition WOMEN'S GENERATION: Contemporary Female Cosmogonies, curated by Dores Sacquegna, will open on Sunday, March 8, 2026, at 6:00 pm. On display will be the works of twenty-five contemporary artists led by godmother/special guest Italian artist Rosamaria Francavilla for the 32nd edition of Women's Art Power. During the opening, the soundscape titled Silences, Sounds and Visions by musician and composer Giovanni Corvaglia will restore the centrality of listening and transform the visit into an act of presence. The event, organized by Primo Piano LivinGallery, can be visited until March 20 at the Palmieri Foundation in Lecce. Bilingual catalogue with texts by curator and Toti Carpentieri.

THE EXHIBITION AND THE ARTISTS

Take a piece of the sky. Know that we are all part of each other (Yoko Ono)

2026 begins under powerful symbolism: in numerology, it is a Universal Year, representing primal energy and the solar archetype.               It is the year of the seed breaking through the earth, of the Warrior of Light inaugurating a new cycle. In astrological language, a harmonious trine between planets suggests fluidity, cooperation between celestial forces, and a symbolic design that we could call the “Magic Triangle” (matter, spirit, and consciousness in dialogue). From this symbolic sky, the WOMEN'S GENERATION: Contemporary Female Cosmogonies exhibition project is born,  with a tribute to three iconic figures who embody three different modes of the cosmic feminine: memory with Louise Bourgeois (archetype of the Cosmic Mother - Earth); obsession with Yayoi Kusama (archetype of infinity - Fire) and participation with Yoko Ono (archetype of the voice - Air). Three works from the Primo Piano collection are on display.

The legacy of these figures is now being collected and reworked through the languages of twenty-two artists from different generations who rework the archetypes in a plural cosmogony of the feminine articulated along five main axes - mythological, organic, vegetal, hybrid, and identitarian - which intertwine and contaminate each other. In this constellation of perspectives, the body becomes a symbolic space, an incarnate myth, and a territory of transformation, as in the works by Rosamaria Francavilla, whose artistic practice celebrates sustainability, food, biodiversity, and fashion through ephemeral creations in which living matter - leaves, vegetables, seeds, and natural fibers - is transformed into aesthetic and conceptual language. On display are three works: Il nido (The Nest), which evokes the idea of protection, origin, belonging, and rebirth; Abito da sera (Evening Dress), a sculptural dress that challenges the concepts of consumption, beauty, and luxury; and Madre Terra del Sud (Mother Earth of the South), a tribute to peasant roots and pain. Interview in the catalogue.

Body-dress-landscape in the work by American artist Justine Giordano, who transforms her wedding dress into a ritual garment between memory and dissolution. The dress abandons its symbolic dimension and becomes an exoskeleton or prosthesis in the works by Chinese artist Angel J. Qin. The body is a fragment, a relic, a scene in the works by American artist Georganne Aldrich Heller.  In the wake of the cosmogonies of the Great Mother, art returns to being a ritual, a transformative experience, an act of symbolic birth in the great book When the Priestesses Walked by American artist Glen Rogers, rich in archetypal symbols such as the womb, the spiral, the triangle, the spider weaving destinies, but also in the multimedia installation Touch the Sky: The Great Mother Dreams Us into Existence by American artist Sandra Cohn, in The Dream Temple, a ritualistic, shamanic, and participatory theatre project by German artist and director Annette Assmy. Mother Earth and sexuality seen as universal archetypes in the works by Ukrainian American artist Yelena Kimelblat and the primordial womb in the work by Chinese artist Victoria Yuanli Yuan.

Each work is both a fragment and a universe, part of a narrative that intertwines memory, spirituality, and identity, as in Maria Luisa Imperiali's installation Piccole Storie (Little Stories) or Virginia Ryan's map Tracking, which draws on the archetype of the sacred serpent in a gesture that becomes a crossing between continents (Italy and Australia), between traditions (Western and Indian), between the personal and collective dimensions. Fertile earth, cyclicality, boundaries, conscious and unconscious paths in the works by American artists Yelena Lev, Lark Pilinsky, Asya Fadeyeva, Tatiana Yartseva, Sara McKenzie, Nicole Martinelli and Dena Haden. Water, as the home of ancestral spirits in the works by Italian American artist Felice Willat and in the video performance Ondine and the Spirits of the Waters by French artist and director Sandra Detourbet. The mediated, two-dimensional, analogical Self emerges as a critical device in the work Love to Fish - Watch Yourself in Captivity by Chinese artist Yuna Yudan Ding and in the X-rays of Dark Insider I transformed into poetic material by Italian artist Margherita Levo Rosenberg.

The event is conceived as a collective act of female empowerment: a cosmogonic universe composed of infinite “sky puzzles” which, as Yoko Ono said, are all part of each other. The exhibition is accompanied every day by the art soundscape Silenzi, suoni e visioni (Silences, sounds and visions) by Giovanni Corvaglia. An immersive project by “Il Giardino di suoni” (The Garden of Sounds) that stems from a fundamental principle: silence as a canvas, sound as colour.

Artists and works in the exhibition: Georganne Aldrich Heller; Annette Assmy; Louise Bourgeois, Sandra Cohn; Sandra Detourbet; Yuna Ding;  Asya Fadeyeva; Rosamaria Francavilla; Justine Giordano; Dena Haden ; Maria Luisa Imperiali ;  Yelena Kimelblat; Yayoi Kusama, Yelena Lev ; Margherita Levo Rosenberg ; Nicole Martinelli ; Sara McKenzie ; Yoko Ono; Lark Pilinksy ; Angel Jiaqi Qin ; Glen Rogers; Virginia Ryan; Tatiana Yartseva ; Victoria Yuan; Felice Willat.

PALMIERI FOUNDATION

Vico Dei Sotterranei, 1 - Lecce

From March 8 to 20, 2026

Open daily with free entrance from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm (mornings by appointment)

Tel: +39 349 37 20659 | primopianogallery@gmail.com

Italian and American Partners: WWTS (World Women Talent System) and LarkGallery